Lost & Found beer garden set to open in Uptown Oakland

The latest addition to the beer garden–crazy East Bay dining scene is opening this weekend: Lost & Found, from the same owners as popular dance bar The Layover, opens Sunday, April 20.

Located at 2040 Telegraph Ave. behind the Paramount Theatre, it’s been a long haul for husband-and-wife owners Christi Vaughn and Tim Martinez, mostly because the two have been doing a lot of the work themselves for the last year—both have extensive building backgrounds, which have been put to the test with this project, more than a year in the making.

“We’ve been getting emails about when we’re opening for the last six months,” Vaughn admits. “We’ve had a lot of people that we’ve gotten to know help us out to get it done.”

This is just a good tagline from Lost & Found’s website

The result will be a massive beer garden in the heart of Oakland’s Uptown arts and entertainment district. There is a 2,000-square-foot interior space, which will offer up inventive gastropub-style fare as well as 17 beers, plus one red and one white wine and root beer for kids, all on tap.

The centerpiece of Lost & Found, however, will be the 7,000-square-foot European-style patio garden, which is a garden in more than the “beer garden” picnic table sense of the word. Gardening is a passion for Vaughn; for the past several years volunteered her time to help get an inmate-run garden program up and running at San Quentin prison. Lost & Found’s garden, many of the plants for which came from Martinez and Vaughn’s own property in West Oakland, will be maintained by graduates from that same program.

“We’re hoping that this can provide some structure and employment opportunities for some of these guys to help them succeed outside of prison,” she says.

As for food, executive chef Dennis Yadroff is planning “gourmet fast food,” with the definition of fast food being anything you can eat with your hands. It’ll be a small, Asian-informed menu with a rotating selection of sandwiches and some creative small plates. But it’s not strictly Asian: for instance, one of the sandwiches will be an Italian roast chicken sandwich flavored with fennel and garlic with arugula and aioli. The ideas, says Yadroff, is to provide order at the counter service without extras–silverware, food runners, fancy plates–so as to “provide delicious food at a more affordable price point.” Beers will be mostly craft and mostly from California.

This Sunday, hours are 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.; check the website later this week for normal hours going forward.

Lost & Found joins Telegraph, Brotzeit Lokal, Moxy, and Portal in the beer garden market in the East Bay, with The Dock at Linden (the joint James Syhabout/Linden Street Brewery project) and Drake’s expected to open in Oakland later this summer.